I'm curious though: the AirBnB website is often presented as how unprofessional-looking an MVP can be, but contextually, it didn't look super horrible compared to the websites of the time. Here's a bunch of "professional websites" in 2008.
I think expectations have evolved and the minimum standards of aesthetics in 2020 presents a higher bar. I wonder if an MVP that looked like that would work in 2020? I'm guessing the bar these days is at least a Bootstrap UI.
Those websites are so cute, particularly Airbnb's :) It's always great to see fledgling companies distinguish their business proposition to a market that doesn't even know about them yet.
e.g.
Wayback machine:
- Airbnb (2008): https://web.archive.org/web/20080310025433/http://www.airbed...
- Uber (2010): https://web.archive.org/web/20101126114649/http://www.uberap...
- Twitter (2006): https://web.archive.org/web/20061127012643/http://twitter.co...
Show HN:
- Analytics.js / Segment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4912076
- Dropbox: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863